Black History Information-365 Days

I am posting Black History to view 365 days a year, not just for February. I would like for you to send me some Black History Info that I can post on this page. I need pictures, videos, and or a write-up. You can send it to me by going to the Comment tab or you can email me at JRoberts6@nc.rr.com

Hillside Park Whitted High School

Preservation Durham

Why it's threatened:

The Hillside Park High School was constructed in 1922 on the west end of Umstead Street where it intersects with South Roxboro Street. Hillside was the first African-American high school constructed in Durham, and was the first opportunity for an education beyond the eighth grade for black students.

Around 1950, in order to solve overcrowding at Hillside Park High School, the school moved to the Whitted Elementary School on Concord Street and this building became the Whitted Junior High School. The building was expanded several times and remained in operation as a junior high school into the 1970s. It was used by Operation Breakthrough into the 1980s, but has been abandoned ever since.

The building is ideally located near North Carolina Central University, downtown Durham and the American Tobacco Historic District and is easily accessible to the Durham Freeway. The school is in desperate need of repair, however, and, with most of its windows broken, is exposed to the elements.

What's Needed:

Preservation Durham would like to see the Hillside Park High School-Whitted Junior High School thoroughly documented and adaptively reused.

The building should be listed to the National Register of Historic Places, making it eligible for state and federal Rehabilitation Tax Credits. The school may also be eligible for local landmark status.

Most important, Durham County must make the preservation, sale and rehabilitation of this school a priority by aggressively marketing the property for adaptive reuse to developers who understand the financial and cultural benefits of historic preservation. Additionally, resources and incentives must be allocated to encourage the successful redevelopment of this building.

PLACES IN PERIL

Preservation Durham this year has launched its Places in Peril list. The historic preservation group hopes the list will:

- Raise community awareness about Durham's architectural and cultural

- Galvanize the public to act to preserve historically and architecturally

important properties.

- Raise awareness about Preservation Durham and its activities.

In its inaugural year, the list of places was chosen by public nomination and through activities of Preservation Durham in the community. To be considered, a property must be culturally or historically significant, actively endangered and able to benefit from raising public awareness about the property.

The Herald-Sun is featuring each of the six areas and sites on this year's list in the Your Community pages. The series continues today with Hillside Park High School - Whitted Junior High School.

When was the last time you saw Liz Claiborne,Conversing with black women,But as soon as her name is printed on a purse,To Macy's you quickly go, running,

Ralph Lauren doesn't even look at black men,Unless t hey aredriving him around town,But as soon as that slave master appears on the back of a horse,You put whatever you have picked up down,

My people reclaim your status in this world and in your life,F.UB.U. in case you didn't know, stands for (For Us By Us),Buying black will someday suffice,Do you know who owns Timberland fashion?

Well, Timberland is owned by the president of the KKK,Surprised? Don't be.Read more books black people,Always hope for the best and prepare for the worst,You may not get what you pay for,But you'll surely pay for what you get.

~ Maya AngelouPLEASE SEND THIS TO ALL OF YOUR FRIENDS SO EVERYONE WILL KNOW THE DEAL.

Kid in College

At thirteen years of age, Stephen Stafford is causing quite a stir at Morehouse College . Stafford has a triple major in pre-med, math and computer science. Though he loves playing video games and playing his drum set, he is no typical teenager.

"I've never taught a student as young as Stephen, and it's been amazing," said computer science professor Sonya Dennis. "He's motivating other students to do better and makes them want to step up their game."

Stafford began his college career at the age of 11, after being home-schooled by his mother. Stafford's mother said that when Stafford began to teach her instead of being taught by her, she knew he needed to be in a college environment.

Now THAT'S what I'm talking about. Stephen Stafford, in my opinion, represents exactly what black men are about: Intelligence, ambition and high academic achievement. This is not to disrespect men in other walks of life, but the truth is that you will never see Stephen Stafford's accomplishments promoted like a rap music video.

We must, as a community, applaud and uphold this young man. We must cheer for him as if he averages 40 points a game. We should converse about his achievements as if he had released a platinum hip-hop album. He should get the same respect as every linebacker, point guard or hip-hop artist in America .

Corporate America will not blow Stephen's trumpet, but I will. I also want all the other Stephen Staffords to make themselves seen. There are hundreds of thousands of Stephen Staffords out there who've been convinced by a culture of thuggery that they should do their best to hide their greatness. Rather than acing math class, they've been taught to measure grams and kilos or to memorize football playbooks that are 100 pages thick. Our young men can analyze the triangle offense in basketball and break down a nickel defense, but then become mentally deficient when it comes to doing algebra, science and social studies. The time for mediocrity is over, since education is the key to making your dreams come true. Sports only creates more nightmares for most of the young men who sacrifice their education in order to be athletes (even those who become professionals). This doesn't mean that athletes don't deserve our respect; instead, it means that we've got to learn to separate the hype from reality.

Stephen will make more money than nearly all of his athletic friends, because education produces economic empowerment. He will also have more personal freedom and professional fulfillment. He will live the American dream, and I encourage all of you to make your own sons into the next Stephen Stafford.

The recipe for our kids is simple:

1) Spend as much time studying as you spend playing sports or working at fast food restaurant jobs. If a kid can work 8 hours for McDonalds, then he can study 4 hours a day in the library.

2) Don't let anyone convince you that you can't achieve whatever you put your mind to. No one has the right to define you or your child. Because my grades were horrible in high school, I was told that I wasn't smart enough to go to college and (like millions of black boys across America ) recommended for special education. Later on, I became the only African American in the world to earn a PhD in Finance during the year 2002. I didn't earn the degree because I was brilliant. I actually earned it because I finally realized that I had the ability and determination to make my dream into a reality.

Just by studying 4 to 5 hours per day (less than the number of hours they would put in to working a minimum wage job), almost any child in America can get a college degree and become a doctor, lawyer or whatever they want. If George Bush can go to Harvard, then every kid in America can graduate from college if they choose to do so. I've taught college for 16 years, and I can tell you that the term "college material" needs to be abolished. Every child is college material if they want to be. That's the truth. Dr. Boyce Watkins is the founder of the Your Black World Coalition and author of the book, "Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about College." To have Dr. Boyce commentary delivered to your email, please click here.

Rosa Parks

Pioneer of the Civil Right Movement

The Higher Education of the Nation’s Top African-American Restaurateur

Jim Crow Meaning

The term Jim Crow originated in a song performed by Daddy Rice, a white minstrel show entertainer in the 1830s. Rice covered his face with charcoal paste or burnt cork to resemble a black man, and then sang and danced a routine in caricature of a silly black person. By the 1850s, this Jim Crow character, one of several stereotypical images of black inferiority in the nation's popular culture, was a standard act in the minstrel shows of the day. How it became a term synonymous with the brutal segregation and disfranchisement of African Americans in the late nineteenth-century is unclear. What is clear, however, is that by 1900, the term was generally identified with those racist laws and actions that deprived African Americans of their civil rights by defining blacks as inferior to whites, as members of a caste of subordinate people. The emergence of segregation in the South actually began immediately after the Civil War when the formerly enslaved people acted quickly to establish their own churches and schools separate from whites. At the same time, most southern states tried to limit the economic and physical freedom of the formerly enslaved by adopting laws known as Black Codes. These early legal attempts at white-imposed segregation and discrimination were short-lived. During the period of Congressional Reconstruction, which lasted from 1866 to 1876, the federal government declared illegal all such acts of legal discrimination against African Americans. Moreover, the passage of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, along with the two Civil Rights Acts of 1866 and 1875 and the various Enforcements Acts of the early 1870s, curtailed the ability of southern whites to formally deprive blacks of their civil rights.